Birthday Party for Jesus

This is our third year having our "Birthday Party for Jesus". I stole this idea from someone, I'm not even sure who it was. On the last Friday night before Christmas we set the table with our china and goblets and have a fancy dinner. The kids choose the menu. This year we had turkey steak, real mashed potatoes with gravy, frozen corn from our garden, and brownies with peppermint ice cream for dessert. We set goals for the coming year of things we will do that will draw us closer to the Savior. These are the gifts we give Him for His birthday. I love this tradition. I feel like at least one night during the month of December we really focus on the true meaning of Christmas. It has been a good thing for our family to do. It also gets the china out of the cupboard once a year!!

Gingerbread Houses!!

Last year we started the tradition of making Gingerbread Houses. The kids love it and it is a fun thing to do as a family. Chris is the master house builder. We have found that it works best to hot glue the graham crackers together and stick the candy on with melted white chocolate. Yum!!! Here are a few pictures of the masterpieces complete with trees, sidewalks, and even picnic tables for Santa.

I have to hand it to Quincy. Because of her constant bladder infections, she has been off all simple sugars since July. She rarely ever complains. She built her house with everyone else and then the next day began slowly taking it apart and sharing it with everyone. She is a trooper. Much stronger than the rest of us. I know all that will power will get her great things one day!!

Family Pictures 2009!!!

WooHoo!! Family pictures are over and done for another year! I always love to get pictures but I absolutely hate the coordinating outfits, doing hair just perfect, getting everyone to the photo shoot with their hair and clothes still in one piece, looking at the camera, and everyone with some sort of smile on their faces. This year was no exception. We were all ranting, raving, crying, screaming and having just a lovely time the morning of pictures. I honestly think it is mostly my fault! I get so uptight trying to get everyone ready!! I was sooo relieved when it was over and done. But, that being said, look what a cute family I have. These are my greatest blessings in all of the world. When I see them there all beautiful and smiling it makes the crazy morning (and some days the crazy life we live) all worth it. I love my family!! I am so grateful for each and every one of them. I am living my dream. All I ever wanted to do my entire life was have a family, and be a "stay at home mom". I used to ask the boys that I dated if they wanted their wives to work outside of the home. It was kind of a trick question. If they said"yes", I was a whole lot more un-interested!! Chris must have answered my question correctly!! He has been wonderful to let me stay at home and do my thing while he provides wonderfully for our family! Thanks honey!


If you look close you can see that they all have red noses and cheeks. That's because it was so freezing cold outside. We really wanted an outside picture but we were a little late in the season. We decided to go for it anyway. We had the pictures taken the morning after Thanksgiving (yes, black Friday) we sacrificed our shopping for family pictures!! The cold gave everyone a little added color to their faces. What a bunch of cute kids!! This was the last picture taken and I can see a look of "I'm going to kill you if you take one more picture of me" seeping out of a couple of faces!! Can't say that I blame them though.

Chris got this cute picture of Quincy and Brinley. We went to the backyard of the photographers mothers' home. It was more like a park. It was beautiful. It had a large pond and this fun swing in the tree. The girls loved the swing.

The whole Hadley clan - 24 in all!!

The whole reason we scheduled family pictures was to get a family group of my whole family. It has been over 20 years since we have had a family picture!! My sister had the great idea to give my parents family pictures for Christmas this year. So we did. We hired the photographer, set the date, coordinated everyone's clothing, and paid for the sitting fee and a print for my parents wall! My mom was thrilled to say the least. It was an absolute miracle that we could all be off work, in town and able to all be in one place with such short notice before Christmas.

My mom just had to have a picture of her five children! So here we are. My mom was looking over the pictures when we got the CD back and she was commenting on what a beautiful sight her 5 children were. My dad walked in and took a look at the picture and said "that looks like a mess to me"!! That is my dad! We know he really loves us! We have to have someone in the family to keep us laughing!

Here Comes Santa Clause

Quincy's choir sang Santa into town last Saturday in Brigham City. They sang several Christmas songs and then Santa arrived on a Fire Truck. We do things a little different in Brigham. Some people get him on a sleigh, we like to have him arrive with 4 firetrucks and an ambulance. It's probably to revive all of the children who are scared to death by his noisy arrival. Brinley was all set this year to sit on his lap and tell him what she wants (which by the way is a real cell phone! Only because she gave up on the real baby. I told her that was impossible even for Santa!!) Needless to say she is getting neither of these items. Anyways, as soon as Santa drove into town Brinley quickly changed her mind.

Quincy was very brave this year and sat on Santa's lap. She told him that she wanted a princess crown. She also wants a bell that people can only hear ring if Santa is real!! That should be interesting.

Our cousins joined us to hear Quincy sing and to see Santa. As you can see below, some enjoyed it better than others!! That darn Santa...he's so scary. I told Brinley that he is just a Grandpa. She gave me the most disgusted look I've ever seen and said, "Santa is NOT a Grandpa". That was quite a horrifying thought for her. She loves her Grandpa's.

This was absolutely the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. Halle was doing great on Santa's lap at first and then decided she needed her Mom a little closer. She pulled Camille right on in with her for her visit with Santa. We laughed about this picture for hours after.

As you can see, Maddi also did not enjoy Santa. She wanted nothing to do with him.

Ethan and Mason were pro's. They didn't have any problem with good old Santa. It must be a boy thing. They were much braver than the girls.

Thanksgiving!

This year we spent Thanksgiving Day in Rexburg, Idaho with Grandpa and Grandma Southwick and Great Grandma Ward. We had to make a quick trip because Chris had to get back to work on Friday. We left Perry at 7:45am and arrived in Rexburg at 10:00am. We were able to spend the day and left that evening around 6:30pm. It was so fun to spend time with family. We were there with Bill & Marci and their family, Dave & Cindy and their family, and Dan, Jan & Lily. The cousins always love being together. Thank goodness for Holidays when we can spend time with our family!!

Cute Great Grandma Ward and beautiful Alecia!!
Our Thanksgiving Feast. It was delicious!!

The master Chef!! This is to pay Grandpa back for all of those years that he took our pictures!!

The ever so cool teenage table!

It wouldn't be a Holiday with the Southwicks without a lot of game playing.

The little ones especially love Grandpa! He usually has at least one of them snuggled on his lap at all times.

Emilee out back in the field behind Grandpa and Grandma's house

The men...I'm sure discussing some future plan for improvement!! The Southwick men always have big plans up their sleeves. They are hard workers and we really are grateful.

"How to Carve a Pumpkin"

So that you will know for next year, this is how you carve a pumpkin (as told by Quincy Southwick- age 6). She had to write this paper in her 1st grade class. I thought it was adorable and worth sharing!!

How to Carve a Pumpkin:

1. pik a pumpkin.

2. get some chopers.

3. get a knife

4. cut the top off

5. get the guts out.

6. carev it.

7. get a candel.

8. put it outside

9. put it on my hey.

10. put the candel in then.

11. lite it

In case you were wondering we have 2 bales of hay on our front porch this year, thus placing the pumpkin on "my hey". Nobody says it better than a 1st grader!!

Championship Volleyball Game!!!

Emilee played her first season of Volleyball. Sometimes I wonder what in the world we are doing to ourselves getting another child involved in Volleyball...it's already been our life for the past four years. Em has confirmed that Volleyball is now officially her favorite sport. This was a great season for her team. They started the season without a win until 3/4 the way through. Then they caught on and really worked well as a team together. It was so fun to see the drastic improvement over a couple months. They won all but one of their games in the tournament and made it to the Championship game last night. They placed 2nd. Congratulations Em, you did a great job.

Sometimes I wonder if all of this frenzied running kids around to their events is worth it...but I think they learn lessons they cannot learn any other way. I remember telling a friend (that's you Karen) that I was worried that I was not doing anything to develop my childrens talents when they were young. She told me to be patient and that they would manifest themselves as they got older. She was right!! It's so fun to watch your kids try new things and be successful at some of them. It makes all of the taxi driving worth it!! Even if I might be sitting at the side of a volleyball court for the next 14 years!! Brinley informed me on the day of Kylee's last Sophomore game that she was going to play volleyball when she got big like Kylee. I should have seen it coming when I married my wonderful 6'6" husband. This is all his fault!! But I love it.

Quincy's Choir Concert

Quincy love love loves to sing. She has been singing in Wasatch Choir for the past two years. She loves her teacher Miss Jani. Quincy sings around the house all of the time, but she will not sing any of her songs for the upcoming program. She wants it to be a surprise. At this program they sang a surprise Christmas song at the end. Chris and I both happened to ask her before her program if she would be singing any Christmas songs. She said, "Hey, how did you know?" We both told her we would act surprised!

We had the opportunity to watch our cousins Alecia and Alex in a play last Friday night. It was Aladdin Jr. Our kids loved it. I asked Quincy if she would like to be in a play when she gets older and she thought she definately would like that. She would love to sing and act...she loves to be on stage! Quincy and Brinley sat on their chairs during the play without moving a muscle for over an hour. Good thing our cousins are cultural so that we can have some cultural experiences ourselves.

First Snow Day 2009!!

This is what the teenager does on the first day of snow...curls up on the couch in her coat because she is sooo cold! She did venture out to play for a bit and then got cold and needed a nap!

Brinley thought this was the coolest thing that she could go outside all by herself and sled down the little hill in our yard. She was out there for almost an hour sledding up and down, up and down. She was thrilled to have snow.

By the way...these pictures were taken exactly one week later than the park pictures. What a drastic change in weather in one week. I personally prefer the park weather, but the kids love them both. We can learn alot from our kids! Make the best of whatever you've got!!

Just a little note...this blog is supposed to be our family journal. For the past year and a half I have tried to keep a journal of all of the things we do together as a family...I could not keep up with the printing of pictures and typing everything up. So I decided I'd better enter the 21st century with everyone else and go technological! I must say, this is a whole lot easier. The posts might not be all that interesting, but it hopefully will be a way to document the things we do as a family. I am realizing that my kids are going to be gone way too soon and I want to have something that we can look back at and see all that we did together.

Park Day in November???

We had to take advantage of this abnormally WARM day in November. I wish the weather could be like this for the rest of the winter...I guess that would mean that we wouldn't have much of a winter...which would be fine with me!! It was so nice to be able to go and play at the park. Quincy wanted to take a picnic snack so we took our banana bread and pistacio nuts in a basket. We are so weird!! It was great fun for a Saturday!!

'TRICK OR TREAT"

Here are the 5 little spooksters before they head out trick or treating. Kylee went to a friends house to hang out, decided to change into a costume and go trick or treating. Her parents were unaware of this...we think she is too old to trick or treat!!

After multiple hours of trick or treating they all came home with WAY too much candy.

We did get lucky this year though as Quincy's school is collecting candy to send to children in Iraq. Somehow Chris talked the kids into giving a good portion of their candy away. The only problem is that it is still in the cupboard and we keep eating it!! Those poor Iraqi children aren't going to get much unless we get it to the school soon!!

Just one funny story of the night...Quincy has been off of all foods containing sugar and dairy for the past four months. This comment by Brinley would only happen in our house and only be funny to us. Chris had taken her around the block trick or treating and she was cold and tired and ready to be done. They went to one last house and when they found no one home Brinley stomped off of the porch and said "Come on Dad, I have enough sugar and dairy".